The present invention relates to a termination module for use in a reprogrammable telephone system for providing telephone service to a multiple telephone instrument service area.
In recent years, the telephone industry has made great strides in reducing telephone equipment installation and maintenance costs. An area of particular concern has been labor costs for reallocating or "reprogramming" telephone numbers among different locations in a service area. Some modularized telephone systems have been developed which minimize field wiring and simplify installation and reprogramming procedures. One prior art system includes a central distribution panel and one or more remote or "satellite" distribution panels permanently wired to the central distribution panel. Patchcords are used with both central and satellite panels to enable reallocation of telephone numbers among individual telephone instruments without physically moving the instruments.
Simple prior art systems are disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 058,885 filed on July 9, 1979 in the name of Arie Verhagen and application Ser. No. 92,865, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,326,107, filed on Nov. 9, 1979 in the name of Jay Perna both assigned to Bunker Ramo Corporation, the assignee of this application. The Verhagen application discloses a system in which incoming telephone lines are individually hard-wired to a plurality of terminal groups on a panel. Individual telephone instrument cords are field-terminated to special plugs which mate with any of the plurality of terminal groups. Thus only a change of a single "connectorized junction" is needed to reprogram a telephone instrument to a different telephone line. The Perna system represents a further simplification of the Verhagen system in that the special plug connectors are attached to the incoming telephone lines at the factory and the telephone instrument cords hard-wired to the terminal groups on the panel. The Verhagen and Perna systems have significant cost advantages over previous systems, are neat in appearance, provide for all wiring to be done on one side of the terminal block, save space, and since only a single connectorized junction is required for each line and handset, are serviceable by relatively unskilled personnel. Both systems do however require that specialized plug connectors be used with either the incoming telephone lines or the telephone instrument cords.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 85,170 filed on Oct. 15, 1979 in the name of Michael A. Hodgetts and assigned to Bunker Ramo Corporation discloses a modified cross-connect panel including a plurality of terminal members, each mateable with any of a plurality of relocatable plug connectors identified with individual telephone instruments. The modified panel also permits conventional hard-wiring of the telephone instrument cords should that be desired. All terminals and relocatable connectors are located on one side of the panel.
In many prior art systems, such as the Hodgetts system described above, relatively large multi-contact connectors, commonly referred to in the trade as "66-blocks", are used for hard-wiring the incoming telephone lines and the telephone instrument station cables which may include 25 wire-pairs. In those systems the telephone instrument cords generally have two-four wire pairs terminated to standardized "modular" plugs for mating with standardized "modular " jacks at the respective stations.
The present invention supplies the need for a simple, low-cost termination module capable of accepting either hard-wire or connectorized terminations of incoming telephone lines and providing an output consisting of a plurality of standardized modular jacks for enabling very easy reallocation of telephone numbers by unskilled personnel. It includes a printed circuit board having foil patterns for connecting either a 66-block or a conventional multi-contact telephone connector, with standardized modular jacks for receiving standardized user-removable modular plugs affixed to telephone instrument line cords.